The invention pertains to information technology and, more particularly, to automatic electronic distribution of both paper and electronic documents. It has application, by way of example, in the routing of documents—including, for example, telefaxes, e-mail messages, spreadsheets, word processing files—within and among enterprises.
The field of electronic document distribution has traditionally been long on promise, but short on delivery. The advent of each new electronic document technology has brought the hope of easy dissemination—not only between the document's original creator and recipient, but also among subsequent recipients inside and outside an enterprise. However, the degree to which this has been achieved in practice varies widely. On one end of the spectrum is e-mail, which is built on a protocol designed for distribution and redistribution and which serves both functions well. On the other end of the spectrum are word processing and scanner technologies, both originally intended for document creation, and both which often achieve distribution only through awkward add-on or third-party solutions.
Most of the recent activity in the art has been directed toward enhancing those add-on and third-party solutions, for example, in regard to scanning. Thus, for example, so-called multifunction devices with embedded scanning allow users to scan a document to an email address or a file server directory. This functionality typically proves adequate for users who only intermittently scan a document to their desk; however, it does not address any other document management requirements the user may have, e.g., vis-a-vis the scanned document and other enterprise documents to which it relates.
A related enhancement provided by the art integrates enterprise (or other) e-mail addresses into multifunction devices, allowing users to scan documents to multiple addresses at one time and to deliver those documents in a given format (e.g., TIFF, PDF, and so forth) to those addresses. Unfortunately, these solutions tend not to integrate with the variety of widely available enterprise document repositories. Moreover, they allow distribution in only one format.
An object of the invention is to provide improved methods and apparatus for enterprise document distribution.
A further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as support both occasional and heavy use within the enterprise.
A still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as can be readily integrated with a variety of enterprise document repositories.
Yet a still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as are scalable and as provide the flexibility to support a range of user and enterprise needs.